XNAAIV 
LETTER ON THE HUMAN REMAINS FOUND IN THE 
SHELL-MOUNDS 
Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, vol. ti., 1863, pp. 265-266. 
JERMYN STREET, Jee 28¢h, 1862. 
My DEAR SIR,—I regret that the state of my health compels me 
to leave London before the meeting of the Ethnological Society 
on Tuesday next, and that, for the same reason, I have been unable 
to draw up any detailed report upon the human remains submitted to 
me by the Council. 
I regret this the less, however, as the very fragmentary condition 
of these remains would, under any circumstances, oblige me to speak 
with very great hesitation in giving an opinion respecting the races of 
mankind to which they belong.. 
Although the bones belong to at least four distinct individuals, 
and there are many portions of skulls among them, there is no cranial 
fragment sufficiently large to enable me to form even an approxi- 
mative judgment as to the contour or the capacity of the skull to 
which it belonged. 
Deprived of this most important datum in any ethnological 
comparison, I have sought for help from the temporal bone, of which 
there are several, the fragments of upper and lower maxilla, and part 
of a frontal bone. The former all exhibit large auditory foramina, 
well developed mastoid, vaginal, and styloid processes, and well 
marked supra-mastoid ridges. 
The latter prove that the palate was deeply excavated and 
narrow ; that the molars were large and even-sized, forming a series 
whose inner contour is almost straight ; that in the inter-maxillary or 
incisive part of the upper maxilla, the alveolar margin is remarkably 
